VERRES Report Summary

ESSAI Training analysis

The goal of the Training Analysis is to identify the training needs and to develop operational applicable solutions for these needs. The Training Analysis consists of three steps: Training Needs Analysis, Training Program Design, and Training Media Specification. The workpackage report provides a detailed description of the competencies that need to be trained in order to enhance pilots' Situation Awareness (SA) and Threat Management (TM). The term 'competencies' was chosen to illustrate that SA and TM are not 'simple' skills, such as riding a bicycle, but an aggregate of several complex (cognitive) skills, knowledge, attitudes, and strategies that should also be addressed as such.

Using the Activity Based Approach the SA and TM competencies could both be decomposed into four essential areas. Essential competencies identified for SA are 'Prepare and Review'; 'Notice and Perceive'; 'Understand and Interpret' and 'Project & Think Ahead'. Essential competencies identified for TM are 'Anticipate and Avoid', 'Detect and Trap', 'Diagnose' and 'Recover'. These areas of competence and respective behaviour strategies through which they become effective will constitute the contents of the proposed ESSAI training solution.

Furthermore, a generic framework for the design and development of the training is proposed. This framework specifies guidelines how the SA/TM competencies and strategies should be trained. Stripped of its contents (ESSAI competencies), the design guidelines and concepts demonstrated here are also applicable for training products of other (complex) skills, both in aviation as well as in other domains.